THE TORN CURTAIN
Matthew 27:50-54

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
March 13, 2005 / Fifth Sunday in Lent

Imagine you are a traveler who has been delayed on your way to the Passover feast in Jerusalem. Your donkey has gotten sick. Or the wheel on your wagon was broken. Or a favorite short cut has been blocked off. You have to get to the City before the Saturday Sabbath. As a devout person you are not allowed to travel on the Sabbath. You are moving as fast as you can this Friday.

Then, at the noon hour, the sky turns black. Shadows mar your way. A storm arises. There are bouts of torrential rain. But you finally get to the gate of the City about two thirty in the afternoon. You pass a big crowd outside the gate. There seems to be some big commotion about some criminals the Romans are crucifying by the roadside. But you pay no attention. You are there for the religious holiday. You are set to get to the Temple. So you rush into the town, and along the streets where even in the rain many people are milling around and talking. You push on toward the Temple court yards. You are eager to get close to the holy of holies. You want to gaze through the Temple portals at the curtain: the splendid gold trimmed curtain that separates people from the presence of God, the inner sanctum, the place where only one priest a year may enter.

As you arrive at the first court yard gate you see a family and some women in mourning. They are tearing their clothes apart, rending their garments in the traditional way of crying over the death of a loved one. You stop just a moment to share some empathy, some quiet with these mourners.

But then you hasten on, up the dark shadowed steps. You go through two court yards, up to where you can normally gaze in at the curtain. The bottom of your robe is muddy and damp as you have skipped through the puddles. You get there, maybe just before three o'clock, that familiar place. It's really too dark to see. There is a lamp stand of candles inside the Temple near the curtain. If it weren't for those candles on this dark day, you wouldn't see the curtain at all.

You take a deep breath. You have made it. You are at the Temple for the Holy Day, before Shabbat. Then – just then – the Earth starts to shake. You hear people screaming. Some things fall off the money-changers tables. You are in an Earthquake. The lamp stand of candles inside the Temple falls over. You fall down on your knees. Just then you hear a tearing and ripping sound. It is like the mourners who were rending their garments, only louder, more dramatic. The priests come running out of the Temple. You suddenly realize the rip is the veil of Temple. The great curtain is being torn from the top unto the bottom. You see it fall over what is left of the lamp stand. A great thud must be the curtain rod splintered and hitting the ground. A big cloud of dust comes out the Temple door. Some stones fall out of the portico. The Earth trembles. It slows. It stops. Some dust clears. People all around you are screaming and scurrying – looking for loved ones. But you are alone. You stand. You look inside. There is no longer a curtain. You, little old you, unimportant, insignificant you, you can look right into the place of God. There is no longer anything to separate you from God.

On this Friday. This strange terrible Friday, something has changed. There is no longer anything to separate you from God.

Of course we Christians say we know why. It has to do with that crucifixion outside the gate. There are no longer any barriers between God and humanity. Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility and made us both one. All the experiences of humanity, including death, now belong to God. And the incredible life of God is now available to humanity.

Paul Tillich suggests ¹ that before that Friday Temples had a pretty good life. They got to have their curtains and acted like they owned God. God was a private property hiding behind the curtain. So everyone honored the Temple as if they were honoring God. But on that Friday the Temple lost its special status. It rends its garments, the Temple is in mourning.

On the one hand this Temple has tasted God, and it knows that that death outside the gate is the death of God incarnate, that God is crying, that the rain is the tears of heaven.

But the Temple is also mourning its own death. No longer will it be the special place that contains God. No longer will it have a special corner on holiness. No longer will the sacred be held in its grasp. God's Spirit is now out and about. God can now dwell in the hearts of people. God does not need Temples to dwell in.

Somehow we have not gotten that message.

History tells us of races that think they can hold God hostage behind a curtain. Too many American churches used to let the whites on the floor nearer to the Bible, nearer to God, but sent the Blacks to the drafty balconies. The curtain has been torn.

The masculine gender used to tell you that they had a grip on God. They would even propose that the image of God is masculine only. Now we can see the truth. The veil of the Temple is ripped from the top onto the bottom.

There are religious denominations who think they have control of God. The curtain is torn.

There are nations that think they deserve the blessing of God more than other nations. The curtain is torn.

Even so called Christians have tried to fashion curtains to exclude Jews from the life of God. They have created holocausts and pogroms and said "we have God and you don't." These so called Christians have connected the name of Jesus to every evil act, and have fashioned barriers between Jesus and his people, the Jesus who said that he came first to the house of Israel. But the curtain of discrimination needs to be rent, and ripped, and torn.

We all like to think that we have a lock on God. That we can keep God behind our curtain, that we are more special to God than those other people, that noisy neighbor, that other religion, that other sexual orientation, that other race. Religions, sects, and cults have gotten away with such nonsense for millennia. But the veil of the Temple is rent from the top unto the bottom. God is available to you, and to you, and to you, and to everybody. And we call this Friday good.

Amen.

1 – Tillich, Paul, "A Cosmic Cross", in Bread and Wine (Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA, 2003), pp.253-257.